Shoot Me Down

Part 22

The house is quiet when I reenter. Mom stares down into her teacup and Dad is pacing again. Finally he speaks,

            “We’re not going to Toronto.”

            Mom doesn’t take her eyes away from the surface of the steaming tea. She doesn’t make a move to drink it either. “Why did you tell the police that?”

            “In case they talk to him…” Dad trails off, whipping back around to look out the window again. “I want him to think we’re going.”

            “What good will it do?” Mom stands up and sets the cup down with trembling hands.

            “If I can catch him off his guard. If…”

            “Don’t go on. I don’t want to think about it.” She puts up one hand, interrupting him. “It makes me sick to think about it.”

            Dad goes to her, putting his hands on her shoulders, dipping his head down to kiss her cheek. “I’ll get to the bottom of this. Don’t worry.”

            Her voice is hollow. “I’m going to lie down.”

            He doesn’t answer. Just watches her leave, eyes on her back as she takes the stairs up to their bedroom, her slippers silent on the carpet.

            Again he resumes pacing, his feet stomping across the kitchen tiles. Louder and louder he stomps, faster and faster. Finally he stops in front of the sliding door, staring outside thoughtfully. He places one hand on the door and slides it open, stepping out onto the deck. His heavy footfalls sound hollow on the wooden boards.

            Dad crosses his arms over his chest and squints at the forest. You can’t see the house through the trees properly, not when the sun is setting. It doesn’t seem to matter though, Dad has his eyes fixed straight ahead. His entire body is rigid, the tension practically leaks into the air around him. After a minute he mutters angrily to himself and storms back into the house, banging the sliding door shut behind him.

 Time doesn’t seem to have any meaning anymore, so I’m not sure what day it is. Nakia must be at school. She used to skip classes and play hooky, and often I’d been convinced to come along with her. I smile, thinking about how bad she’d been for my grades. How distressed my parents had been when I started coming home with Cs and Ds instead of my usual As. It was her fault, but we’d had so much fun.

            I stand beside the kitchen sink looking absently out at the forest, thinking about the various shenanigans we’d got up to. Sneaking into bars with fake IDs and crashing parties. Going shopping when we should have been sitting in math class. It hadn’t been healthy, but every minute of it had been fun.

Memories have a way of making me sad now, so I try to push them away, to concentrate on something else. I turn and leave the kitchen, drift down the hallway peering into the empty rooms. No Caleb either.

            The den is a complete mess. The table is covered in playing cards, some of them lie in pools of sticky beer.  Candy bar wrappers and empty beer bottles litter the surface. The ash tray in the middle of the table stinks up the entire room, and a half smoked joint is propped up on one side of it. I eye the mess thoughtfully. Maybe it’s time for a test. Maybe I can learn to control the emotions that make things happen for me. It’s worth a try.

           I try to drum up anger, try to push Sam’s words of warning out of my mind. I won’t be trapped here with Caleb, I won’t let myself. But I do need to control this so I can do something other than drifting around the house uselessly. I need to be able to communicate somehow. Sucking in a deep breath I picture Caleb’s face. The curve of his jaw, the stubble on his chin, his sharp, bright eyes. His poisonous good looks. The flutter of anger starts in my stomach, and I grit my teeth and force myself to think about what he did to me. Remember, I tell myself, remember the gun…how he held it in his hand. Remember the feeling of nothingness, and the realization of what had happened. Remember the shower curtain, and how they dumped your body on the path like it was nothing.